Edward Elric on discrimination
by Hamato Zealus
Summary: So, I was bored on the train again, and decided to write another letter to the editorial of a newspaper.   I do not own Edward Elric, Fullmetal Alchemist, or any related characters or concepts. They are all properties of their respective copyright owners


To the editor,

I write to you on a matter that I feel strongly about, on a personal level. When going about my usual everyday business, I keep being confronted with a distinct oppression of a certain group of people.  
You might think I speak of religious minorities, like the Ishbalan people, or of certain kinds of behavior. On the contrary, I speak of a group of people which consists of a significant chunk of the population. The people who are part of this group can neither help it, nor did they choose to be part of it in any way. Some people might now think I speak of a group with a severe deformity, but nothing is further from the truth.  
I speak of a small, yet significantly large group of people, one which I am sometimes considered part of. I write to you about the plight of the vertically challenged.  
There are a few matters which I would like to discuss in this letter.

First of all, _do not call us small. _Although some people seem to think it is normal to call people who are vertically challenged insignificant grains of sand which you wouldn't even notice if you stepped on them, a thing I have personally experienced quite a few times (well, not exactly those words, but I know they are _thinking_ it, and they talk behind my back... I _know _they do). You shouldn't call a person who is not as tall as a mountain insignificant, in fact, they carry a lot of weight (not literary, but you catch my drift). If you absolutely must point out our size, use a more respectful way of describing us, like vertically challenged.

Secondly, _do not discriminate us due to our size. _How many times has it been now that me and my brother (who, for the record, is still the youngest of us two, let that be said) have gone to a fair or an amusement park, and that (usually after queuing for several hours) I am told that I cannot enter? Phrases like "You must be this tall to enter this ride" are to me, nothing more than pure oppression of a minority.

Thirdly, _age is not size dependant_. Whenever me and my brother meet people who don't know us, we always have the same conversation, which always boils down to the fact that they expected my brother to be the oldest one, due to his size. This is entirely short-sighted, and completely wrong. First of all, because we barely differ in size, so this shouldn't be an issue whatsoever. But the point I want to make here is that it doesn't matter how tall you are for age. Take, for example, an elephant. Once an elephant has finished growing, at around one year or so, it is quite large. If we then take an elderly person, and put him or her next to the elephant, one could hardly argue that they in fact, differ quite a lot in size. Does that make the elephant older? I think not. Does that make the elephant better? Most certainly not. (Unless the elderly person in question is significantly useless, but let us assume he or she isn't.)

Finally, _size does not matter. _Some people seem to think that more is always better. I beg to differ on this point, and would like to point out that one's size does not matter at all. It is all about how well one performs. If a large person would go about roughly, and smashing through everything, would he be better than a person who carefully found the right time and place to strike in order to achieve a great success, I doubt anyone would have to think long which one was in fact, the better of the two.

I thank you for your time in reading this, and I hope that in this letter I have sufficiently put the spotlight on a group which is often overlooked (I mean seriously... is it that hard to look down sometimes?). So for all you tall people out there: Next time you see a vertically challenged person, don't call them small, but act natural. For all you vertically challenged people out there: don't let the giants get to you, I know from personal experience that they'll eventually stop, especially if you hit them in the face with a hard metal object (note that the consequences for hitting random people lies fully with you).  
Yours sincerely,

Edward Elric,

State alchemist.


End file.
